Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - NewsOK - ‘Solving' the game of checkersNewsOK
POWERED BY THE OKLAHOMAN •
THE STATE'S MOST TRUSTED NEWSArticle features a computer scientist Jonathan Schaeffer
who used computers to prove that checkers,
when played perfectly, is a no-win game. news link

‘Solving' the game of checkers

Strange But True: A computer scientist Jonathan Schaeffer used computers to
prove that checkers, when played perfectly, is a no-win game.

Q: In what sense was the game
of checkers “solved” in 2007, and how might someone have died as a result?

A: That was when computer scientist
Jonathan Schaeffer and colleagues used computers to prove that checkers,
when played perfectly, is a no-win game, says
Clifford Pickover in “The Math Book.” This means that checkers, like
tick-tack-toe, will always end in a draw if the players make no wrong moves.
Schaeffer's proof required hundreds of computers and more than 18 years of work
— the most complex game ever solved. Given that there are about 500 billion
billion possible checkers positions on the 8-by-8-square board, this proof was
far harder than the one for tick-tack-toe. The research team considered 39
trillion arrangements with 10 or fewer pieces on the board to determine if red
or black would win, achieving a “major benchmark in the field of artificial
intelligence.”

In 1994, Schaeffer's “Chinook” program played world champion
Marion Tinsley to a series of draws. When Tinsley died of cancer eight
months later, “some chided Schaeffer for accelerating the death due to the
stress Chinook placed on Tinsley.”